The Truth Beneath the Moonlight
by Mererid
Summary: Alice might not be a Confessor, but she can read the truth in her mistresses' eyes. Season 1 Finale.


So, my first Legend of the Seeker fanfiction. Just popped into my head for no particular reason, I was bored, I wrote it down. No one around to beta it, so grammar and spelling are probably worse then normal. I apologize in advance for everything and anything. From the point of view of Alice set during Season 1 Finale. Away you go folks...

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She was a servant. It was her job to attend to her mistress, the Lady Raul, and take note of anything she might require. So Alice watched her. Every night, while she would clear away any mess that had collected throughout the day, the Mother Confessor would sit at the window, bathed in whatever moonlight filtered through the open glass, stroke her stomach and talk to her daughter. She would tell her stories of the Seeker and of the wizard Zeddicus, of their adventures together. She recalled the amazing tales of the Seekers that came before and the other confessors. She told the girl how important she was, and all the plans she had, and how important Richard was to the world. Some nights she cried. She would apologize to the child, explaining that she was sorry about her reasons for bringing her into the world. Sorry that she had only became with child, so that the Seeker could come back and set the world right. Sorry that when that happened, she would no longer exist, and that her burden in life was essentially to insure her own destruction. These were the hardest nights. The moonlight no longer made her glow in otherworldly beauty, but cast the shadow of desperate tragedy across her features. These nights usually coincided with one of Lord Raul's visits to his ladies chamber.

But as the day of the child's birth grew closer, Alice saw the light in her mistresses eyes grow. Most would mistake it as moonlight, but she knew better, because it was always there, moon or no. It was hope. Hope that her daughter was the key to her lover's return, the end of her nightmare and the salvation of the world. But then something happened that extinguished the light. The child was born, a male. She saw Kahlan's eyes lose all brightness. Through the door she heard her mistress plead with Raul to kill the child and she would give him a daughter. He had refused. Kahlan in turn refused to see the child for weeks. Alice knew why. She was stealing herself. The next time she saw the child, she would kill him. But it was fruitless in the end. She couldn't kill the innocent baby. He had yet to commit any crime, and so she couldn't take his life. He was her son. It was then that Alice saw a glint return, other shadows had joined it, determination, and occasionally dread, but a small beacon of hope was at the center.

They had decided the only reason Raul had let Kahlan live after delivering him a son, was to keep her in agony over what he may become and to slowly break her with her "wifely" duties to him. But as the years past, Kahlan educated Nicholas in the ways of a confessor, when to use his power, how to control it, and most importantly, never to abuse it. The hope and determination in her eyes grew, and the dread faded. She believed she could overpower the combined forces of Darken Raul's influence and the blood lust inherit in male confessors. That she could win and that she **was **winning. Alice thought the mother's love would overcome and she would have her son as her champion. So did Lord Raul. This was why he planned to take the child to Aydindril, to be train away from his mother. It was now or never. She must tell him his destiny.

And then it happened.

The minute poor Ethan came in, hand bandaged and bloody, and presented his own finger to his master, Kahlan's life ended. Eight years she had tried to avoid this. Everything she had taught him…she failed. Richard might never come home, everything, all her suffering had been for nothing. The next time Alice looked her in the eyes, she saw emptiness. Her features were set in hard determination. The last thing she told her, as she walked out concealing the dagger, was to survive.

Alice had failed. They had caught her. She knew she was going to die, there was no way out of it, and she was terrified. Brought before Lord Raul, she saw the sorrow in the Mother Confessors eyes. She cast a distressed look of apology for her fate. Alice didn't have time to give thanks, even silently for Kahlan's attempts to free her. She felt the dagger bite into her throat and the blood rush warm and fast over her hands. She fell to the floor gasping. She lived long enough to see her mistress's fate, hands bound; her son thrust a dagger into her heart. She fell to the ground, facing Alice, her eyes no longer holding any sorrow, resolve, or even pain. There was nothing. Alice's last thought as the blood fanned out below her was not about her own life, of things she had done, or wouldn't get to do, or even really about how it had all failed, but of the stories that Kahlan used to tell in the moonlight, and a hope that the Seeker might find a way.

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Well that's that. If you feel so inclined, tell me what you think. Pet peeve: I know the grammar and spelling suck, I warned you in the beginning, you don't have to remind me, it will just make me angry with you. Aside from that click what used to be the purple/blue/gray button and is now a blue link with a thought bubble and tell me your fascinating thoughts!


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